The quickest source for ancient compass directions would be the
September 1970 issue of the quarterly bulletin of the Archeological
Society of Virginia. My article, titled "Boxing a very old compass:
how to plat" is on pages 20-23.  If you have a copy of Chapman's
small boat handling book, there is a very good compass reproduced
there, at least in the edition I use.

Anyone doing land-title research in Virginia will do well to get a
copy of Surveyors and Statesmen, by Sarah S. Hughes, published by the
Virginia Association of Surveyors in 1979.

My favorite mapping program is LandCalc, which actually requires
everything to be expressed in feet or meters. I asked the developer
if he could do perches, and he suggested that I just express every
course with the number of perches times 16.5, which the program will
calculate.

Perches, or rods, are a constant. Chains could be 33 feet (Rathbone
Chain) or 66 feet. This is the reason so many surveys are scaled
1"=660 feet (ten chains) or some multiple. The LandCalc program can
turn out prints at that scale. To determine which chain was in use,
it sometimes is necessry to plat the rest of the patent and go back
to see if the course in chains refers to 33 or 66 feet. Fortunately,
the choice of chain was generally consistent in an area at a time.

Breadth at the head probably means the landward dimension. The term
"head" often refers to the course parallel to the stream on which the
parcel lay. The path probably is in fact a path; many old patents
refer to paths.

At 10:35 AM -0500 11/21/00, Netti Schreiner-Yantis wrote:
>Ahoy there!
>
>Are there any sailors-or anyone who can read compasses-who can
>interpret an early Virginia patent
>for me?
>

--
Ned Heite  ([log in to unmask])
***************************************
*                                     *
* And finally, a message from         *
* Mother Earth, to all those folks    *
* who composted the leaves in their   *
* yards this fall:                    *
*                 Thanks very mulch!  *
*                                     *
***************************************

To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html